Imports down by 6.56 percent in eight months of fiscal year 2009: power generation machinery up by 62.98 percent

The import of power generation machinery has increased by 62.98 per cent in the first eight month of current fiscal to $1.202 billion as compared to $737 million in the same period last year. According to detailed trade figures, the Federal Bureau of Statistics (FBS) released here on Tuesday, the overall imports of machinery have gone down by 4.33 per cent.
But imports of power generation, construction and mining machinery and electrical machinery have increased by 62.98 per cent, 37.55 per cent and 10.78 per cent, respectively during the period under review. However, overall imports of all items have declined by 6.56 per cent with the exceptions of food group and other items, which registered 0.15 per cent and 7.95 per cent growth, respectively.
The negative growth was witnessed by all other groups, among which transport group was on the top with 41.40 per cent decline in imports owing to negative imports by all the sub sectors except a sub sector placed under the heading of others. Imports of petroleum group declined by 0.01 per cent during the period under review, while textile group went down by 327.11 per cent with raw cotton 60.06 per cent and other textile items 20.04 per cent negative growth.
A decline of 7.29 per cent and 3.24 per cent was seen in the imports of agriculture, other chemical and metal group respectively. Miscellaneous group imports went down by 10.60 per cent during the first eight months of current fiscal.
Monthly figures showed an increase of 10.91 per cent in imports during the month of March 2009 against February 2009. The imports of food group witnessed an increase of 12.59 per cent in the month of March against the corresponding month owing to more imports of dry fruits, spices, soybean oil, palm oil, sugar, pulses and other items. Machinery sector's import grew by 25.85 per cent in the month of March over February mainly because of mobile phone imports, construction machinery, agricultural machinery and implements and other machinery.
Textile group's imports increased by 48.33 per cent in March over February owing to import of raw cotton, synthetic fiber, synthetic and artificial silk yarn, warm clothing and other textile items. Also imports of agriculture and other chemicals group increased by 13.50 per cent during March over February 2009.
Imports of transport and metal groups have been the only two sectors, which witnessed negative growth in March over February. Metal group witnessed a negative growth of 2.53 per in March while transport group went down by 14.17 per cent in the month of March as compared to February.